http://oznik.com/kolhair02.html
Former Military Jerusalem Governor confirms: Ethnic
Cleansing of Palestinians Began Right After the Occupation
Arnon Regular, Kol Ha'ir Weekly Magazine
July 26, 2001, Western Jerusalem
Former Israeli Army General Shlomo Lahat, who was Commander of
Eastern Jerusalem immediately after the occupation in 1967 admits he
carried out a policy to evacuate Palestinians who lived in the Old City
into areas outside the Old City walls. In a letter to Jerusalem council
member, published Today by Jerusalem Weekly Magazine Kol Ha'ir, Lahat
wrote: "In the power of my authority as Military of Jerusalem,
immediately after the city was liberated in 1967, I gave orders that
Arab inhabitants be evacuated from the Western Wall area and from the
Jewish quarter in the Old City. They were given, in agreement,
alternative housing in Jerusalem and its environs." Lahat also confirms
that he had promised the evacuated that their rights will not be
affected after they are resettled.
Not many tourists to Jerusalem are aware that a whole Palestinian
neighborhood used to stand in the area that is now a wide plaza next to
the Wailing Wall, and over part of which now stand houses for Jews. Nor
do guides tell the tourists that many Arab Palestinians had lived in the
Jewish Quarter in the Old City even before 1948, but were evicted in
1967 and not allowed even to purchase a home there afterward.
The admission emerged from the sad case of Omar Qwasma, a Palestinian
who was moved by Israeli authorities in 1967 from his home in the Old
City of Jerusalem to the village of Al-A'zariya. Three years ago
Qwasma's rights for as a victim of a terrorist attack were withdrawn by
the Israeli National Insurance Institute, on the pretext that he does
not reside inside Jerusalem city limits.
Since the signing of the Oslo accords in 1993, Israeli government
began a "quiet cleansing" policy, revoking Palestinian residents of
Jerusalem their resident status, striving for an all Jewish city even in
those areas that remained Arab after 1948. Qwasma now becomes a victim
of Israeli ethnic cleansing policy for the second time.
With the help of council member Meir Margalit, Qwasma approached
Lahat, who also wrote: "I remember in certainty that the evacuated
inhabitants were promised that no harm will come to them, and that their
rights will not be affected." In spite of this promise, Qwasma, whose
son was killed by a terrorist bomb on an Israeli bus in 1996, was told
by Israeli National Insurance Institute that his right for a bereft
parent's allowance, as well as all social rights such as an old age
allowance, medical insurance, and welfare were removed because the house
he lives in, in Al-A'zariya stands outside Jerusalem's municipal
limits.
Avraham Mana', who handles Eastern Jerusalem cases in the National
Insurance Institute wrote to him in response that if he moved to live
back inside the municipal limits of Jerusalem, "We would be able to
renew his insurance with the National Insurance."
